Intel and Google Collaborate on Next Generation Chromebooks Powered by Haswell

Chromebooks are about to get a shot in the arm

It took some time for consumers to warm to the idea of Chromebooks, probably because netbooks hadn't completely died out when they first emerged. Today, however, Samsung's Chromebook is the best selling laptop on Amazon with a 4/5 star rating from over 3,000 user reviews. It's fair to say that Chromebooks have grown on a segment of PC shoppers, and in the coming months, these cloud-oriented devices will become a bit more powerful.

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Fransisco, Intel and Google jointly announced a new lineup of Chromebooks based on Haswell.

"Intel’s latest processors sip less power to improve battery life by more than 2X over previous generations, while offering increased performance. This means these new Chromebooks last almost all day so you can focus on getting things done," Google stated in a blog post.

Acer and HP, along with newcomers to the Chromebook scene Asus and Toshiba, will launch newly designed models, Google says. Acer's already offered up a preview of its third-generation Chromebook at IDF. It's an 11.6-inch machine measuring around 0.75 inches thick and weighing around 2.76 pounds. It has HDMI output, two USB ports (one USB 3.0), SD card clot, and up to 8.5 hours of battery life.

I remember hearing that some of the earlier Chromebooks came with HDMI out, but that when plugged into HDMI TVs would not send any signal. Has this been fixed with software patches, or was it a hardware limitation?